Forever
by Ninjee
Summary: "A long time ago, I promised you forever. That's what you're gonna get." He returns to Bad Wolf Bay after a very long time, and she's there waiting for him. They are both much older and not much wiser, and still, when she takes his hand, their fingers fit. Oneshot.


Time passes strangely for her now.

It could have been a hundred years, a million, or only a matter of days since they left her - it doesn't matter anymore. The days weave themselves around her without her really noticing, and she watches them go without caring. It seems like it's been a long time since she's cared.

* * *

_Her mother watches her from a land that some call Heaven, and worries for her. She is alone, her mother tells no one, she is all by herself and she doesn't grow old._

* * *

They all went on, even the man who'd stayed when _he_ had not, the man she'd loved for his time on the earth because he and the one who left her were one and the same. She had loved him, for their time. She had cared, and there had been kisses and smiles and inside jokes, carpets and couches and a mortgage. No children, not for them. And she had cried when he'd died and left her, cried the way she had that day so many years past when she thought the other him, the first him, had been lost to her forever. She had cried the way she'd cried on the worst day of her life, (on a beach, in Norway) but this time it had been much worse. She'd never considered him dying, especially of old age - it was far too _normal,_ he would go out with a bang, with flags and parades - but he hadn't, and all of a sudden, one day, her husband was gone.

Her mum and dad had gone as well, and then everyone else had drifted away. She'd sent word through Torchwood to her brother that she had died, and he had believed, had mourned, and moved on. She had gone, slipped out of everyone's lives easily, and she tried to make peace with it.

She'd made her home on Bad Wolf Bay. She was the bad wolf, now, she assumed, half-formed theories appearing in her head when she tried to sleep, and she remembered a soft kiss from lips long gone. _He took it away, that can't be it, it must be something else that's changed me._ But there were doubts in her mind about whether this was true, whether he took all of it or just most of it, and she couldn't help but think about it when she can't sleep.

Because something inside her wasn't letting her grow old, wasn't letting her go and join the people she loved, and she despaired. She _wanted_ to go. She wanted to leave this Earth where everything still seemed half-backwards, and find him again, her lonely god, who is dead and gone. She closes her eyes and begs to leave, to be with him again, with her mother, her father, to not be so desperately _lonely. _

But it, whatever it was inside her that made her heart thrum with energy and her face stay young didn't leave her. If anything, it grew, until she felt strange and wild and uncomfortable in her own skin, and she didn't go to town unless she needed food, and even then she wore a scarf and sunglasses so no one would know her. A different town each time.

Yes, the days pass strangely now. She forgets to eat, forgets to sleep. She sits on the shore to pass her time, and wonders why the world won't let her join him in the world beyond, him and her mum and dad and now brother.

She visits her home once in a while. Her brother's grandchildren are there, playing. She cries in her car on the way home when she does this, but she needs to know.

She sleeps and dreams of him, of the worlds that they once visited together, and of him, freckles and a smile and endless, Time-drowned eyes.

* * *

One day, she wakes to the soft _whoosh_ that she knows so well and she thinks that she is still in a dream.

But she walks outside onto Bad Wolf Bay and there it is, the old blue box that is bigger on the inside. His box. She can't move toward it, she can only watch and wait.

The door swings open and it's not the face she'd expected. Of course he would have regenerated by now, she tells herself quickly. This time he's almost ginger, but not quite, just a little too brown, and she wonders if he was angry at coming so close and then missing it. She wonders what color these new eyes are, she can't tell, he's too far away. He's got quite a chin, this time round.

His hair is long and soft, and he looks young, younger than he's ever been. She takes a few trembling steps toward him, and his face collapses into tears.

She runs to him and he cries that he's sorry. He says he should have done anything to get her back, but he thought she'd be happy - "And you deserved that, Rose, you deserved to be happy" - and she was human and couldn't stay with the real him forever and he tried to give her a way.

He cries onto her shoulder for people she's never heard of and one name that she knows - Donna -

O_h, poor Donna, she thinks, wildly, it seemed so close to a bit of a happy ending, the Doctor Donna, too good to last, these things usually are _

- and Amy, and Rory -

_my Ponds, _he sobs,_ I'll never see them again_

- and River -

_and she can feel love in the way he says her name and wonders, madly, about complications, but the way he's got his arms around her and his face buried in her hair is too good to be anything but real_

- and so many others that he's seen go.

She understands. She's seen the light leave her mother's eyes and her father's, and she remembers the exact painful moment when the other him died, his hand going limp in hers. So she holds him as he cries, pushing his hair off his forehead and whispering to him.

She tells him it's okay, that she has him, that she's here. That she loves him, has always loved him.

"Quite right, too." he whispers through his tears. It brings a shaky smile to both their faces, those familiar words. This time he says what he didn't get to finish before.

He tells her he loves her, has from the moment he grabbed her hand and led her from the living plastic. And every moment after.

* * *

It's only later, after his tears have dried and he's sitting inside next to her, eating a banana, that he asks her where the other him is. The human him that he left behind.

"Dead." she says. "He died years ago." She doesn't know how many anymore.

"But you're still here and-"

"I never got any older, Doctor." she says, and it feels strange to say his name after so long.

That shuts him up for a moment, and he's gaping at her like a fish. She smiles. You don't surprise him often, this is something she remembers, and it feels good to have done so.

"I suppose Bad Wolf never really left." she tells him, a conclusion she'd come to over the years. There had been too much time all alone and too much time to think, to roll over every possibility in her head about what had happened to her. And one day she thought about golden light and a soft voice singing in her head, and remembered. Despite his kiss, it had stayed. All these years, a part of her.

Of course he still looks confused, but something like joy is spreading across his features.

"If that's true, then you would be a part of the TARDIS." he says thoughtfully, the sadness leaving his eyes for a moment. "Or you've got something of her in you - I could test it - maybe it's radiation."

"I hope it - whatever_ it_ is - would let me live as long as the old girl, too." she says. And she has hoped. What is happening right now is a half-formed daydream that she never bothered to truly finish, because she thought it was impossible.

When his eyes widen, (he hadn't been daring to hope, not for her, not yet) she continues.

"I'm never leaving you again. A long time ago, I promised you forever. That's what you're gonna get." She smiles, tongue poking out from between her teeth. "You're stuck with me this time."

As his smile, pure joy, spreads over his face, it looks just the same on this face as it did on the faces before it. His smile's always felt the same.

"Stuck with you." he says slowly. "That's not so bad."

Having each other again after all this time doesn't take away the pain of all they've lost, but it helps. She makes him better, he knows, just like she always has.

And he's her Doctor who showed her the stars, and made her better, too, made her into more than a shop girl. Her Doctor who she loves, who she saves worlds with.

She smiles at him, and the decision's already been made.

"Then forever it'll be, Rose Tyler." he says. And she takes his hand once more.

* * *

_A/N: This is my first story for Doctor Who. So, probably not that good. _

_I'm actually only up to series 2 xD I know basically what happens in series 3, and that Rose gets left in Pete's World with a clone, but nothing after that. So I apologize if Eleven's a little OOC. I haven't really met him yet._

_Please R&R! It means a lot!_

_I don't own anything above except plot. :D_

_Much love, Ninjee~_


End file.
